There is now statistical proof that your friends are happier than you

Ever feel jealous of your friends? Do you worry that they're happier, more fulfilled or more successful than you? Bad news: a new equation has found evidence of a 'happiness paradox', which confirms exactly that.

Researchers from Indiana University, New York University and Wageningen University in the Netherlands discovered the paradox when studying the similar 'friendship paradox', MIT Technology Review reports.

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The friendship paradox is a counter-intuitive phenomenon which explains why on average your friends have more friends than you on social media. It occurs because of the "skewed way" people accumulate friends on social media. Most of us have relatively few friends -- a few hundred at most -- but a small minority have thousands of friends or followers, skewing the average. It follows, therefore, that a similar effect may be seen with happiness.

The effect, the researchers write, "may explain recent findings that widespread social network media use leads to reduced happiness" -- if your friends are more popular than you, it's not too big a leap to think that they might be happier too.

To analyse the claim, the team set out to find a 'happiness paradox' on Twitter. The team analysed 3,000 tweets from 39,110 Twitter users using an algorithm that detects mood and sentiment. From this, they extrapolated a "happiness level". So if you send a lot of negative tweets, for example, your happiness level would be much lower than someone who sends exclusively positive tweets.

They found that not only the friendship paradox held true, but also that a "significant happiness paradox" did too; the presence of a few super-engaged, apparently extremely happy and popular people skewed the average. This could, they say, lead to increased unhappiness among general users. "Although happy and unhappy groups are both affected by a significant happiness paradox, unhappy subjects are most strongly affected," they wrote. "A possible explanation may lie in the stronger relation between the happiness of individuals in this group and the overall happiness of their friends".

The team acknowledge that their work has limitations -- the algorithm may not be the best way to analyse how happy someone is, for a start. They have a pretty strong message for those of us who are social media addicts, though. "We caution against the widespread use of social media given the likelihood that it decreases the happiness and well-being of particularly the most vulnerable groups in society".